Moving IT for A World-Famous Firm

With an impending 300-mile premises move, and an opportunity to simultaneously consolidate and upgrade IT infrastructure, British Millerain turned to Shackleton's expert team.

Products Used

The Landscape

As the world’s premier manufacturer of waxed cottons, British Millerain require their IT infrastructure to be every bit as robust and flexible as their famous products. The acquisition of the UK’s leading commission dye-house and a restructuring of production in the business led the company - which was established in 1880 - to implement a major IT infrastructure change project. The Shackleton team was drafted in to assist.

The Plan

The first stage in the plan was to physically move four physical servers from the firm’s Dundee site to two separate sites in Rochdale and Elland. At the same time we identified an opportunity to consolidate some outdated hardware through virtualisation and following this we were tasked with providing capacity for planned Line of Business Updates. This involved implementing two Hyper-V hosts to remove the four old servers to consolidate onto new physical hardware. The final part of the plan was to create and implement a Business Continuity Solution that would allow the business to continue functioning from any other location in the event of a major incident at the main office.

The Journey

Our process was designed specifically with minimal interruption in mind - not an easy task when you have to factor in a 600-mile round trip, major infrastructure changes and updates in one exercise. We focused our efforts on weekends, and planned downtime well in advance to reduce the impact on end users by allowing them to plan around our work.

The Goal

We were able to carry out the server consolidation, virtualisation, infrastructure upgrades and the physical relocation of equipment with little to no impact on end users - exactly the positive outcome we planned to achieve.

By working with external Line of Business Support on system upgrades simultaneously, we were able to bring both strands of the project together perfectly, resulting in a perfectly happy client.

Client Testimonial

"We were delighted with Shackleton's knowledge and expertise in helping us on this major undertaking for our company.

It was not just the physical move of equipment down south, but the opportunity to consolidate our systems and upgrade our infrastructure at the same time, that was the key.

Implementing a business continuity solution has also given us peace of mind in case of a major disaster."